Post #44 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing and Healing – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Sign Language
By Susan Spangler, author & illustrator of The Year of the Bird: True Stories in Words and Pictures.
You can find her signs on her Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/susanspangler.pixwords.
I’m looking for a sign.
Okay. No problem.
Enter. Exit. One Way. Yield. No Outlet. No Smoking.
Warning sign. Peace sign. Vital sign.
Sign of life.
Sign of the times.
Wait right there! Sign of the times. That’s the one I was looking for. Because I’ve been thinking about the signs that I’ve been finding online in recent times. I bet you’ve seen them, too. Those graphically embellished quotes. The retro-illustrated sarcastic jokes. The floral-bordered testimonies of faith. The exquisitely rendered encouraging words.
You could call them posters, placards, sayings, or just plain quotes. Actually, I don’t know whether they even have a name. But to me, they’re signs. Signs of the times. And they’re everywhere. By which I mean, everywhere in the cyber-sense. As in all over Pinterest, Tumblr, Blogspot, Xanga and Facebook. Especially Facebook, where people post them constantly. A small selection:
I may be crazy, but all the best people are.
The worst mistake is not to make any.
You are much stronger than you think.
Truly spiritual paths all meet in the middle.
And…
When we have nothing left but God, we finally realize that God is enough.
Sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places.
I’m not great at advice, but may I interest you in a sarcastic comment?
Just a random sampling. Cloying, insightful, sanctimonious, witty, hackneyed, original, heartfelt, contemptuous. They run the gamut. Who knows when they started popping up, one sign at a time, interspersed with the photos of people’s suppers and vacations and updates on their daily doings. Now there are entire websites devoted exclusively to posting signs numerous times every day of the year.
Detour
Can we take a quick break? Because, well, I feel the need to explain something here. You know how, when you’re talking to someone you just met at a party, and you bring up a TV show you’ve been watching, and they say, “Oh, I don’t watch television, except for an occasional documentary on PBS.” Has that ever happened to you? Of course it has. What’s your response? Is it, “Oh, I love TV! I watch it all the time!” Really? Congratulations! I’ve never had the nerve to say that, myself.
And now comes Facebook. What? You don’t do Facebook? Well then. I’ll just seize this moment to say: I’m on Facebook all the time! I could have said that it’s only because I have to be. Because when you’re promoting a book you’ve just written, a Facebook author page is now a necessity. And I am, and I have one, and it is true.
But it wouldn’t be the whole truth. The full disclosure is: I like being on Facebook. I like the chance to be a little in touch with people whose paths I’d otherwise never cross. I like seeing the photos my cousin Jane in Maine takes on her evening walks, my friend Karen’s news from Australia, and the singing videos my five nieces in Florida post on each other’s birthdays.
It’s a lot like the way you feel when you have a friendly exchange with a grocery checker or with someone who’s standing next to you in a ticket line. Or when you spot a familiar face in a crowd of strangers.
We’re not talking depth of substance here. Just fleeting encounters of the pleasant kind. Instants of empathy. Social haikus. Sparks of connection.
Signs of the times
All right then. Back to those online signs. What started as a trickle — a sign posted now and then — has become a deluge. Some people post five or ten signs in a row every time they log on. Some people post them in place of writing any personal updates at all. They use the signs to speak for them. And it’s not just other people. I do it, too. And that got me wondering. What’s going on here?
I have a theory that, along with thumbs, our unquenchable quest for life’s meaning is what makes us human. We humans have always been looking for signs.
Take the ancient proverbs. Like road signs, they helped people figure out which way to turn:
When you have given nothing, ask for nothing.
Do not remove a fly from your friend’s forehead with a hatchet.
Trumpet in a herd of elephants; crow in the company of cocks; bleat in a flock of goats.
Thousands of years later, the number of people who might consider using a hatchet to remove a fly from a friend’s forehead has probably dwindled. But the principle’s the same.
And the world is still leaving us at a loss for words. We’re still trying to find ways to make sense of life’s stories. Still looking for clues to help us explain the past and cope with the present.
It’s not that we all have the scientist’s or the poet’s curiosity about ultimate origins. I think that what most of us are really asking are questions like: Am I alone? Why did this happen to me? What does it all mean? How can I make things better? What’s next?
Show me a sign.The future: the eternal mystery. Searching for clues, we watch for warning signs and hopeful signs, wherever we can find them. In the zodiac, the Mayan calendar, the predictions of Nostradamus, crystal balls, probability theories, wishes, prayers, and, of course, fortune cookies.
Have you ever seen anyone leave a fortune cookie uncracked? Never, right? Because, even though we all know they’re completely random and fanciful, who hasn’t felt a little bit of a warm glow when their cookie reveals that Good news will come to you by mail? Or better yet, Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you. (Actually, fortune cookies are a Japanese invention, though they’ve been served in Chinese restaurants across America since the early 1900s. Almost 3 billion a year, in case you were wondering.)
These days, unfortunately, fortune cookies rarely contain actual fortunes. When you crack them open now, what you almost always find instead is an adage, a saying, a maxim, a proverb. Exactly the kind of signs that people post online every minute of every day.
Sign posts
Imagine a roadside so crammed with billboards that you can barely see the landscape. That’s how it looks online these days, on Facebook and Pinterest and lots of other sites. Sign after sign. An endless stream.
Keep calm and carry on. Jesus loves me. Raise your hand if you think I’m adorable.
What gives? Why is it that so many people feel the need to advertise their daily points of view? Is it simply more evidence of the obsessive self-documentation that seems to be dominating our trivia-tweeting, cell phone picture-taking culture these days?
That’s exactly what I thought, At first. Until I started collecting signs. Not just the ones I liked or laughed at or agreed with. But every sign I found. Even the ones with frilly pink hearts. And kittens.
And it’s funny. When you look at them all together — hundreds of signs of all different kinds — it can change the way you see them. Reading one after the other, after the other —quotes from Walt Whitman and the Dalai Lama nestled among heartfelt prayers and snarky insults — you start to notice the common threads that connect even the most disparate signs.Bruce Lee and Maya Angelou? Sarcasm and faith? Common threads? Come on! I know. Really. But try this: Strip away the obvious differences, and I think what you’ll find at the core of every sign are the timeless human cries: Listen! This is how I feel. This is what I believe. This made me laugh. This made me think. This might help. Do you know what I mean?
Nothing here to worry about, folks. Not a sign of culture in decline. Just people doing what people have always done: asking questions, taking stands, searching for meaning and connection, seeking kinship and understanding, looking for a sign.
So sit back. Relax. Enjoy the signs:
A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for everything.
Most of all, let love guide your life.
And —
Don’t forget to be awesome.
Be sure to check out Susie Spangler’s memoir.